


All I Can Do

by obtuse91



Category: Spider-Man (Video Game 2018)
Genre: F/M, No Beta, One Shot, Spider-Man (video game 2018) - Freeform, Spoilers, and then he can't sleep, guess who runs into him, mahattan at night, peter does some crime fighting, peter has a vivid dream, post all DLCs, some not unwelcome flirtation on a rooftop, while ignoring his personal problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26355196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obtuse91/pseuds/obtuse91
Summary: Perhaps Felicia's unrequited pining is not so unrequited as she assumed.This is a companion piece to Steady Me Now.
Relationships: Felicia Hardy/Peter Parker
Kudos: 42





	All I Can Do

3am on a Wednesday finds Peter in the Financial District sitting cross-legged on the edge of a building, FDR Drive stories below, scrolling through his tag on Twitter. He’s not on patrol yet, it’s the hot coffee from a 24 hour bodega near Wall Street thats brought him there. Truth be told, he wouldn’t be out at all if it weren’t for Felicia.

But he can’t blame her when he’d been the one doing the dreaming, can he.

For Peter sleep comes easy, deep, and uninterrupted until the sound of his alarm tells him he’s late, and whatever he’d been dreaming is quickly forgotten, if thought of at all. When he dreams of Felicia, though rare, it’s utterly different. She drops in, much like in waking life, unannounced and unforgettable. The dreams aren’t obscene as a rule, but always vivid, heavy and saturated in a way that sits with him, sometimes for days.

He can’t ignore the fact that MJ goes on assignment to Symkaria, they get in one fight, and the first thing he does is dream-cheat on her.

He’d woken sweaty, heart pounding and aggressively aroused- unintentional but not exactly unwelcome in that liminal fog preceding consciousness. Felicia was there on his skin, every touch sharp with emotion and longing too intense for his rational mind to comprehend. Even fully awake the dream lingered. He twisted in his sheets, _aching_ , and it became clear; that yearning deep in his gut wasn’t something he could sleep off. Going on patrol was the answer to everything, especially blowing off steam.

“But first, coffee!” He’d yelled with irony as he web-launched from his window. Someone smoking on a nearby fire escape told him to shut-up and he felt comforted already.

His suit was a bit snug in the, er, groin region, so in effort to avoid giving Jameson his next ‘Just the Facts’ episode, he’d traversed unseen by rooftop and was perfectly decent by the time he swung into the bodega.

So there he was, sequestered on a ledge, catching up on social media.

Until he sees a tweet begging Spider-Man and Black Cat to get back together and he’s confronted with everything again. He’s not in the mood for a brood sesh about why he’s got a thing for sweet girls with a mean streak, or why the dream is bothering him at all. It’s a perfectly clear night and Brooklyn twinkles at him across the East river, a cargo ship drifts by next to a party cruise that glows inside out with neon lights. All appears good and quiet. Sometimes the city seems so safe and secure on her own. He’s got no excuse to avoid analyzing his feelings.

Then dispatch announces a high speed car chase down Water St and he’s so eager for action he almost forgets to pull his mask back down.

He webs the entire car between two buildings, blocking traffic and gridlocking an intersection. The police wont be happy about that, but he’d heard gunshots a few blocks away and didn’t have a choice. It turns out to be a bunch of idiots breaking into a jewelry store and then having a slight disagreement about how the spoils were to be divided. One of the robbers is bleeding out when Peter gets there, and by the time he subdues the others, the authorities haven’t shown up. He webs the guys wound (abdomen, not good), and swings him over to Lower Manhattan Hospital. Presbyterian, whatever it’s called now. The closest one.

“You’re not going to complain that I’m taking you to a teaching hospital right?” Peter asks the nearly unconscious bad guy, “cause I just, I think you have bigger problems.”

He’s about to call Yuri before he remembers with a pang that’s not an option anymore, he’s on his own again. He lands abruptly at the entrance to ER and alarms a group of paramedics getting some fresh air.   
“Gun shot wound,” he explains, laying the man on a nearby gurney, “he’s lost a lot of blood.” The Paramedics aren’t stunned for long and burst into action. All except one, a young man who hadn’t stopped staring. To save time Peter gladly assigns him a task.

“This is his wallet, he was involved in an armed robbery so make sure he gets processed correctly for when the police come to question him.”

The paramedic holds the wallet wide-eyed, either still a little star struck or the blood on Peter’s suit is really bloody.

“Alrighty, thanks my man!” Peter gives him finger guns and leaps away, he has to book it back to the jewelry store so he can give the police McBleedsalot’s name.

“Sometimes the city seems so safe and secure on her own? Yeah, nice one Pete, just had to go and temp fate like that,” he mutters to himself.

It’s not the first time he’s missed Yuri keenly, no friend in the NYPD means a little more footwork, but none of it is enough to get his mind off the dream. He talks to the authorities who’ve arrived at the robbery, speaking and moving like an automaton while his head is filled with Felicia. MJ would definitely laugh at him. She’d tell him that dreams are totally out of anyone's control, and that it’s not like he would really cheat on her. It was just a dream, she’d say.  
It wasn’t the dream that worried Peter, but how it made him feel. He woke up and wanted more.

Later, he rescues somebody stuffed in the trunk of a car parked in an alley and behind it on the dirty brick is Black Cat’s tag. Right there in the alley; dumpsters to the left, asphalt littered with disintegrating anthora cups and cigarette butts, and the smell of ripe diaper in the air. Peter wonders if she’s doing it just to torture him because he cannot fathom another reason for her to have been through here. He sees her street art on rooftops and billboards from one end of the city to the other, some inexplicable locations like this one, some precarious locations that no normal person could access. Except him, and her.

He fights his way to dawn, convinced he needs to exhaust himself in order to clear his head, but at about 5am the universe has other plans. The horizon is just beginning to show itself, warm and pale pink against the urban skyline, when she happens upon him in the middle of intercepting some very armed men breaking into a Tribeca townhouse by roof.

“Wait a minute, doesn’t Taylor Swift live around here?” he asks the criminals with overblown excitement. He blames the sudden influx of quips as the reason he doesn’t see the man with a rocket launcher. Peter’s spider sense barely tingles before Felicia knocks him out of the path of a rocket. The explosion backlights her silhouette, hair flowing perfectly around her face. If he didn’t know better, he’d call that a straight up superhero entrance. He recovers quickly, web bombing a guy behind her about to pull the trigger at the same time she uses her momentum to kart wheel into an axe kick on someone behind Peter. They end up a breath apart, with exactly one second to look at each other before living requires moving again.

“Black Cat,” he says, a denunciation.

“Spider,” she demures. 

The remaining men aren’t more than a slight inconvenience for them, but still, they step into rhythm in a way that thrills Peter.

“I’m always saving your ass,” she says when the last guy goes down.

Before Peter can answer, some cheering coming from the next roof over reveals that spectators were filming the entire thing.

“Well, here’s to some grainy iPhone footage and wild speculation on TMZ tomorrow,” Peter says.

“I hope this isn’t going to make your girlfriend upset,” Felicia pouts unconvincingly, “either way, I’m more of a voyeur than an exhibitionist. What do you say we get out of here?” She grabs Peter’s hand and steps off the edge, yanking him along.

  
“Call 911!” Peter shouts to the people, gesturing to the webbed bundle of KO’d thugs as he disappears over the edge. He is without a doubt stronger than her, but for some reason he doesn’t resist. She gave him a choice, and he could feel the triumph rolling off her at his decision to stay. They plummet to the street hand-in-hand and it becomes a game of chicken to see who will swing first (Peter does), then they swing tandem. Her grappling hooks aren’t as quick as his web shooters, but she’s more acrobatic than he is and the resulting competition is exhilarating enough to continue past Canal st. They push and stretch in balance, integrating their styles so smoothly it comes out like a choreographed dance. Peter knows how rare their shared syntax is, how addictive. They land, by unspoken communication, on a tall building in SoHo away from prying eyes. It takes him a few breaths to come down from the high and remember that the second he trusts her is when he usually gets burned. It was too coincidental to dream about her like he did only to have her materialize next to him that same night.

He suddenly feels vulnerable, like she can smell it on him or something. She saunters over to him, absolutely no problem invading his personal space, and Peter doesn’t know if he can weather her lascivious come-ons in his current state.

“So, where were we?” She walks two fingers up his chest, “you feel tense. Bad night, Spider?” Well, she doesn’t waste any time does she.

_Felicia._

Brimming with magnetism and ambiguity, and for all her faults, he wants her. It’s annoying how quickly she affects him, but he doesn’t falter.

“Doesn’t appear to be getting any better,” he deflects. She surreptitiously adjusts her cuffs.

“Not still mad at me, are you? Besides, we were even the last time I saved your life. Now it looks likes you owe me.”

“I don’t know if you noticed but you’re not in jail. That’s thanks to me.”

“And why did you never turn me in… despite your threats? Just curious.”

The claw on her index finger drags up his arm. Peter narrows his eyes.

“Call it a thank you for Hammerhead.”

“I knew you still had a soft spot for me, Peter Parker.” She traces the shape of his features through his mask, focusing on his lips. She doesn’t often call him by his name, it’s unsettling, especially because she’d done so in his dream. With concentrated effort he removes her hand gently.

“A thank you, and a warning. I’m a little short staffed at the moment or it might have been a different story.”

“I heard. Poor Captain Watanabe. If you’re in the market for a new partner, I’m available.”

“I already have one,” he says sharply.

“Do you? I hear the missus is off pursuing an exciting career and life that doesn’t seem to include you.”

Peter fidgets in his suit.

The night Felicia ‘died’ Peter and MJ had gotten into one of those long talks couples do and at one point MJ admitted she was jealous. Not in those words, but she did say that after they broke up, seeing Spider-Man and Black Cat in the media all the time was a constant reminder of her insecurities and their age old fight; Peter’s overbearing need to protect her and MJ feeling powerless. Whereas Black Cat seemed capable of all the things that MJ needed saving for. ‘You looked like partners,’ she said...

He doesn’t tell Felicia any of that, because the last thing she needs is encouragement. Instead, he goes on the offencive.

“You’re the one that broke up with me, Felicia, in case you forgot.”

She turns away from him and he doesn’t catch her expression.

“I had some self-reflection to do,” she says, gracefully leaning on the nearby water tower.

“You mean you had some breaking the law to do and you knew I wouldn’t approve.”

She laughs and, never stationary for long, pushes off the rusty support, slinking over a steam vent toward him. She tries not to break the streak of nonchalance in her tone but Peter detects a vein of underlying outrage.

“Must you always think the worst of me?”

“You know I don’t. Even when I should,” he says impulsively. His words ring like a confession and he has the ridiculous urge to take his mask off and let her look into his eyes, whatever she needs to see his sincerity, but what he’s said has shocked her enough. Her green eyes flicker with realization and he suddenly feels uneasy. He doesn’t regret it yet, but he knows he will.

“I mean, I just know you can do so much more with your talents,” he backpedals.

“Mhm, you would know,” she smirks suggestively.

“I-” stammers Peter, Felicia taps a finger to his lips. She holds his gaze briefly, and something like sincerity comes through.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say it.”

She leaves him then, toes to the ledge. Facing the sunrise, the now intense orange glow highlights her profile when she looks over her shoulder at him without meeting his eyes.

“Oh. If you do find yourself… in need of a partner. My offer still stands,” she simpers, and steps off. He watches her until she swings out of sight, as usual, leaving him stymied. He feels like he’s exposed his underbelly to a predator who can taste victory, but wants to play before the killing stroke. He knows this _thing_ with her is not over, whether he likes it or not, and he’s beginning to question why he has to wonder if he likes it or not.

He shakes his head, thinks maybe he should call it a night. He only gets sidetracked twice on the way home, stopping a petty theft and then buying a churro, but when he finally climbs through the window into his apartment, his bed doesn’t look as welcoming as he had hoped.

MJ calls just as he’s drifting off, the intermittent buzzing on his nightstand luring him back to consciousness. He stares at the screen for what seems like a long time before answering.

**Author's Note:**

> Both this and Steady Me Now titles were taken from the song 'Stupid' by Sarah McLachlan which I feel describes Peter and Felicia's relationship perfectly- at times. other times I do feel they are perfect for each other. Anyway.


End file.
